The Possibilities of Badges and Blockchain

In March 2015, I wrote “Peering Deep into the Future of Educational Credentialing” for DML Central. In it, I explored the potential for the blockchain technology (best known for underpinning Bitcoin) to add an extra layer of trust and verification to Open Badges. Now, a year later, we’re a lot closer to that reality than I originally envisioned. The diffusion of innovation has moved so quickly that even government ministers are excited about the possibilities afforded by the blockchain.

Let’s back up a bit first. The great thing about the Open Badges Infrastructure is that it’s a distributed, evidence-based system of credentialing. There are no gatekeepers; anyone can issue, earn, and display badges. Similarly, the blockchain is a distributed, open “ledger” to which anybody can add evidence and information in the form of cryptographic hashes. Long story short, pairing blockchain technology with Open Badges allows for trusted credentialing on a level usually reserved for international banking.

We’re already beginning to see some innovation in this area. For example, Holberton School announced that they were the first school in the world to deliver their certificates using the Bitcoin blockchain. Likewise, Stampery has started issuing certificates using blockchain technology. MIT Media Lab is also exploring something similar.

Using the blockchain for mere digital certificates is like strapping a rocket onto a Model T Ford. It may allow you to go faster in a straight line, but doesn’t afford you any new options. It is perhaps what is usually called a “sustaining innovation.” Using Open Badges with the blockchain is a much more disruptive proposition. What if everyone had the keys to the kingdom?

There are two main ways in which I think using Open Badges with blockchain technology will lead to interesting developments. As Serge Ravet has written one of these is to engender what he calls “bits of trust.” In other words, the levels of authenticity that the blockchain can prove, when coupled with a gatekeeper-less credentialing system, may lead to the disintermediation of educational institutions as we currently recognise them. In plain English: blockchain plus badges equals rocket fuel for verified, trusted credentials. Everyone gets to point to a rock-solid “proof of learning” that they can use anywhere.

The other major development is a reduction in the cost of issuing of Open Badges at scale — effectively to zero. While there is no cost to issuing a few badges here and there using one of the many badge-issuing platforms, doing so at scale requires an “enterprise level” plan, or development of your own system. Both cost in terms of an off-the-shelf subscription, or paying developers. Once badges are on the blockchain, the financial cost of securely storing the data associated with each badge is, in real terms, reduced to zero.

Open Badges is a maturing ecosystem and community. Likewise, although Bitcoin has been around for longer than badges, it is only recently that the true potential for blockchain technologies is being realised. There are many blockchains and approaches to using the technology. Perhaps it is time for someone, possibly a government, group of universities, or non-profit NGO, to step in to offer blockchain badges as a service?

I’m increasingly optimistic about the future of Open Badges when used in conjunction with other emerging technologies. The opportunity for anyone to issue cryptographically-signed credentials with the proof in a public ledger sounds like a geeky thing to be excited about. However, as with many developments in technology and society, some of the most interesting things happen behind the scenes.

Many thanks to Eylan Ezekiel, Oliver Quinlan, Kerri Lemoie and Doug Levin for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. Their expertise has been invaluable, but any errors remain my own.

Originally published at dmlcentral.net on February 11, 2016.

Open Badges for Keeps – Now and Near

Open Badges makes it possible for anyone to issue a badge. The badge data or the public keys are hosted on the issuer’s web server. The metadata of badges contains links to where they are hosted. But what happens if the issuer goes away? or the web server goes down? Whether you are new to badges or have been issuing badges for some time, it’s an important consideration. As Open Badges works now, the long-term verifiability & validity of the badges is the obligation of the issuer or issuing platform.

So what are the options? How can issuers ensure that their earners will keep their badges for as long as they need them? Here are some options to consider now:

• Hosting badge criteria, evidence, and badge metadata on a smaller, cheaper server – There are plenty of free and inexpensive web hosts out there. When first planning your issuing site, consider your short-term and long-term costs. It doesn’t take much room or space to host badges.
• Coordinating with other Issuers – One thing to consider is collaborating with other issuers on hosting; a server where you share the costs and maintenance of web server. Or you could make an arrangement (with agreement of earners) to transfer badge data to another issuer’s service (while keeping issuing dates intact) and doing permanent redirects or providing earners with the new urls for their badges.
• W3C Permanent Identifiers – This service is run by the W3C Permanent Identifier Group. It maintains an HTTPS-only, permanent redirection service hosted at w3id.org operating much like a switchboard that can reconfigure entries to point to a new location if the old location stops working. V 1.1 of the Open Badges spec hosts the context file here: https://openbadgespec.org/v1/context.json
• PURL(Persistent Uniform Resource Locator) – This toolkit is provided by the OCLC and Zepheira. It can be used to create permanent identifiers that point to resources. It’s been around for a long time and seems to work similarly as W3C Permanent identifiers without the SSL support.
• Amber — The Berkman Center for Internet & Society created this tool to keep content accessible. It automatically saves a snapshot of every page linked to on a website. Initial development has been focused on WordPress and Drupal but they have also started Apache and Nginx modules which may be more relevant for issuers.

With Achievery we went with the first option and slimmed down the platform from badge issuing to just badge hosting on an inexpensive server. Primarily we did this because it was the fastest and easiest at the time and also because we wanted badges to maintain their urls. That said, this also give us the flexibility to pursue other options in the future some of which I’ve been digging into as part of my work with OpenWorks Group and BadgeChain.

I’ve been researching how Open Badges can work on the blockchain and part of that initial research has been investigating the Distributed Web (this post at The Internet Archive does a good job of explaining it). I’ll write more about this soon but for now, here’s a list of projects to look into that I think will play a role in the future of Open Badges:

• ZeroNet – Peer-To-Peer websites using bitcoin cryptography and the BitTorrent network. Publish static and dynamic websites using their ZeroFrame API or JavaScript using their built-in SQL database. Here’s how to Get Started. I can’t wait to try this and would love to see someone use it to build out an issuing system using it (if you are interested in this – ping me).
• IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) – Like ZeroNet, IPFS is a peer-topeer distributed file system and it also serves static web pages (that can run client-side JavaScript). Unlike ZeroNet, it cannot work with dynamic data. In order for your files to get distributed, they need to be requested by another IPFS user who will then seed your files. It’s really very simple to install and use.

Other distributed system projects that I’ve come across but haven’t dug into yet:

• freedom.js
• Cryptosphere
• Freenet

It’s my opinion that the near future of Badges is a combination of Blockchain (serving as the ledger) and distributed systems. With these systems we can ensure that badges have a permanence and reliability that web hosting can’t provide. Team BadgeChain will continue our focus here. You can stay-up-to-date on our Medium Publication.